"Back in the day when there was a larger attendance were all the other
conferences in existence (Tug, IBM Technical, NEUGC, Ocean, RPG DB2 etc.
etc. )?
Maybe all these smaller conferences end up taking away from the larger one."

Actually, there were even more local user groups around the country. The
group in the San Francisco area used to draw almost 100 people to its
monthly dinner meetings.

On the West Coast, the IBM region sponsored what they called the DP
Management Conferences twice a year. Attendance around 250 was the norm. The
conferences rotated between 3 venues in Monterey CA, Vancouver BC and
Salishan Lodge on the Oregon Coast.

It's my belief that these groups and conferences served the purpose of
whetting the appetites of the IT folks for getting even more education at
the COMMON conferences. We were all on the upslope of the learning curve
about what was coming out of Rochester, and the wonderful thing was that IBM
had the dough available to send its gurus out into the field to do the
teaching.

Nowadays, however.......................................

In deference to David, this thread should be moved to the non-technical
forum.

Back in the day when there was a larger attendance were all
the other conferences in existence (Tug, IBM Technical,
NEUGC, Ocean, RPG DB2 etc. etc. )?
Maybe all these smaller conferences end up taking away from
the larger one.

I wonder why Common doesn't publish the actual attendance
(excluding volunteers, vendors, press).
I feel if they are not publishing it, it must not be good.

On the other hand what does attendance have to do with
individuals attending, as long as there is a good offering
of sessions what does one care if the attendance is 200 or
2,000?
I can see why the vendors care.

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